Attentio is sponsoring a panel at the Blogging4Business event in London on the 4th of April. What the organisers say: “Social media has given a megaphone to the masses. But where do companies fit in? Is it wise to engage a movement that is evolving so rapdily? Is there any return on investment for producing a corporate blog or podcast? Is it safer and smarter to keep social media strategies behind the firewall? And what about advertising in the baffling maze of social sites where tomorrow’s consumers and opinion-makers flock? Blogging4Business 2007 will have all these answers and more.”

We are lucky to have Heather Hopkins from Hitwise, Kris Hoet from MSN and Scott Thomson from Starcom as panelists. We do a quick presentation on the space and then it is turned over to Q&A with the audience. There was a good buzz around this last year, so I am looking forward to it this year, more information is available here, there are still some tickets left. 

Our Session: Next Generation Market Research - How Companies are Listening and Learning from Social Conversation

“Blog monitoring, blog auditing and brand social research are some of the real buzzwords that get companies excited. From PR to marketing to advertising to consumer brands, research directors and company executives are embracing the ability to listen to the global conversation and learn what real people are saying about goods and services without the need for focus groups or artificial surveys. Whether you need to know how your company is perceived or how your competitors’s new brand fared during that expensive US launch, next generation market research is the social tool every company can benefit from”

Using a unscientific survey of 10 Attentio people at lunch, I tried to get to the bottom of how impactful the currency of Second Life will become. The Linden Dollar is the currency of the fastest growing virtual world and people have become “real millionaires” by buying and selling properties (and other money making initiatives) because the currency has value and can be traded for real dollars.

My question was when will the Linden Dollar be published next to “real” currencies in the Financial Times? Using a “wisdom of crowds” approach, the table answered the question of how long it would take. Never was the main answer (5), 3 said 18-24 months and 2 said within a year. Ascribing a value of say - 20 years to infinity - to the never answer, this means the lunch crowd, that day, think it will between 10 years and never before the Linden Dollar gets to the Financial Times.

In hindsight the better question was probably, when will a virtual world currency be treated in this way rather than Second Life specifically? Second Life has emerged recently as a big player but were not the first. It also has problems (I think) in keeping members that are attracted initially. It hasn’t worked enough on building a younger persons world, my take on this is that 12-18 year olds will be so familiar with these places that they will be used to talking and trading there when they get to 18+. Newer worlds will emerge which makes believe that I will open the FT on a plane (you know when you get it for free) and there will be virtual currency compared to the dollar, pound and euro in the not so distant future. 

There are more studies that look at how brands will increasingly engage in social media. A recent release by Jupiter goes pretty far in explaining how companies will need to target social networks to have well connected individuals talk about them. The thinking goes that if 18-34 age group trust the opinions of other network users three times more than advertisements well you better get relevant in the network. It is intuitive I suppose, but they also suggest marketers target networks with specialised campaigns. What works for Bebo, won’t work with Myspace, needs to be adjusted for Facebook etc.

We talk about this where ever we can and provide services that help companies in identifying the influentials, but also finding where tto make best investments. Our take is that telling a company that Engadget is influential is not exactly high value information, but if you want to do seeding or provide additional information then this group of bloggers or network users will be most likely to use and talk about your products/services (good or bad…) and the possible impact will be maximised. Of course there is still art with the science in this process, but the tools are getting better.

Anyway, as I am inspired by the Jupiter Report, here is part of the press release.

NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–JupiterResearch, a leading authority on the impact of the Internet and emerging consumer technologies on business, has found that 48 percent of brand marketers plan to use social marketing tactics in the next year, compared to 38 percent who did so last year. Detailed in a new report, “Social Networking Sites: Defining Advertising Opportunities in a Competitive Landscape,” JupiterResearch defines social networking sites as Websites designed for members to create and post content, usually in the form of profile pages, primarily in order to communicate with each other. “Users between 18 and 34 are much more likely than older audiences to visit social networks daily,” said Emily Riley, JupiterResearch Analyst and lead author of the report. “Thirty percent of frequent social networkers trust their peers’ opinions when making a major purchase decision, but only ten percent trust advertisements. Consequently, brand marketers must harness brand advocates and influentials by providing additional motivation for frequent networkers to engage in social marketing.”

We have been chosen as finalists for the Red Herring Award. As they say themselves “Red Herring is a global media company uniting the world’s best high technology innovators, venture investors and business decision makers in a variety of forums: a leading innovation magazine; an online daily technology news service; technology newsletters, and major events for technology leaders around the globe. Red Herring provides an insider’s access to the global innovation economy, featuring unparalleled insights on the emerging technologies driving the economy.”So it is great to be on the list… Other Belgian companies were In Crowd and Q-Layer, well done to them. Red Herring have an event “Pursuit of Disruption” with the award ceremony in Cannes from the 25th - 27th of March, more information is available here.